First Harvest

   Today I harvested some broccoli and radishes.  Each has a slightly sad story. But first, a photo of the bounty!

  As you will notice in the above photo there seems to be two different kinds of broccoli. Alas, they are the same kind but the bottom one was allowed to get too big.  So, apparently you are suppose to chop the broccoli off when it looks like it does at the top of the photo before yellow flowers start to form. Never having grown broccoli before I had no idea and thought eventually it would fill out or something like that. But the youtube video I watched said once it gets the yellow flowers it starts to get bitter. So that was a but of a fail. However, the good news is that once you cut that off other smaller heads will start to grow so you can still get more out of the plant. Yay! I will keep you updated on that. Now the radishes...

  Someone seems to have been munching on our radishes before we did.  We did not see the culprits but we assume rats as we live in a city and have a fence around to keep out larger animals. When the radishes grow nice and big the stops start to pop out of the ground and only on that exposed area is there bite marks.  I pulled out some of the ready ones and covered the rest with as much dirt as I could to help dissuade the munchers. I just washed the radishes good and cut off the chomped bits and will go ahead and eat them.  If I never post again you will know I died of some wired radish transmitted disease.

  In the end we got just over half a pound of veggies. I've already eaten two radishes but luckily there will be more.  I plan to weigh every harvest so I can get an idea of how much our little plots can produce and then see if I can increase it the next year.  Already the lettuce is thriving, tomato plants have flowers, pea plants have shot to the moon and our prized cherries are ripening.

   We have two dwarf cherry tree in the back that we planted last year.  I didn't really expect them fruit but low and behold they have! We each had one the other day and although not the biggest or the sweetest cherry we were very proud they were ours. I don't think we will even get enough to make a jar of jam but they will be eaten and greatly enjoyed. They are only about 4ft high and 2ft wide at the moment. We have plans to some day have a row of them along our south fence.  Our own mini orchard.

Good eating all!